Michelle Found an Article about Emily Dickinson's "Loaded Gun" poem

Link

Susan Howe provides another viewpoint on Emily Dickinson's poetry, especially on her Civil War work.

Thank you, Michelle!

Readings for the Rest of Session II -- Summer 2010

Here are the readings for the rest of our time together.  Those that we discuss in class will be on the final.  I also encourage you to read through the background readings on Multiply!



On Tuesday 8/3, we will finish watching Nosferatu, and we will discuss "The Yellow Wallpaper" and the following poems by Emily Dickinson: "A narrow Fellow in the Grass," "They shut me up in Prose," "Much Madness is Divinest Sense," "My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun--,"  "The Soul has Bandaged Moments," and "I Heard a Fly buzz."  All but the last reading will be in Vol. 5 of our anthology.  See this link for the last poem:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15393



For Wednesday 8/4, we will read Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (Vol. 5) as well as Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (Vol. 5.  Keats' "The Eve of St. Agnes" will be an extra reading for those who have the time:
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/eveofstagnes.html .)
You may also like to read Charles Baudelaire's "Albatross" in Vol. 5.



Thursday (8/5) is the beginning of our unit on folk tales.  
For Charles Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood," see this link:   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0333.html#perrault
See the following link for the Brothers Grimm's "Little Red Cap":   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm026.html
"The Goose Girl" is here:   http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm089.html
"The Twelve Dancing Princesses" follow:  http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/twelvedancing/index.html
See the following link for two versions of "Hansel and Gretel":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm015a.html
"The Girl Without Hands" follows:  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm031.html



These readings may spill over onto Monday 8/9.  We will add "Godfather Death":  http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm044.html.
as well as I.B. Singer's "Gimpel the Fool":  http://salvoblue.homestead.com/gimpel.html

For Tuesday 8/10 and Wednesday 8/11, we will read Voltaire's Candide in Vol. 4.



Then on Thursday 8/12, we will finish up with some modern poetry. 
Let's start with Mary Ellen Solt's "Forsythia":  http://www.writing.upenn.edu/library/Solt-Mary-Ellen_Forsythia.html
Since we've already read poems by Emily Dickinson, we'll read some by Walt Whitman.  First is his "I Hear America Singing":  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15752

Next is his "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20006

Last is his "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd":  http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20270

I'll add Allen Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California": http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15306

Let's finish with Gwendolyn Brooks' "the rites for cousin vit":  http://www.tcsn.net/jackie/Archive/gwendolyn_brooks.htm

and Ruben Dario's "Walt Whitman," "Autumn," and "Theodore Roosevelt":
http://faculty.tamucc.edu/stalley/2335Resources/DarioWhitman.htm

http://www.dariana.com/R_Dario_poems.html#in_autumn

http://www.wsu.edu/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/dario.html



The final will be a take home, due to me by Monday 8/15.

Readings for the Objective Final

Above is another landscape by Thomas Cole.  Below are our readings from after the midterm.

Washington Irving's "The Wife" and "Rip Van Winkle"

Catherine Maria Sedgwick's "Cacoethes Scribendi"

Jane Johnson Schoolcraft's "Mishosha"

Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Birthmark" and "Young Goodman Brown"

Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven," "Annabel Lee," and "The Fall of the House of Usher"

(We also mentioned William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "My Lost Youth" as well as Anne Bradstreet's "A Letter to Her Husband, Absent on Publick Employment.")

Harriet Beecher Stowe's "The Seamstress" and "Trials of a Housekeeper"

Herman Melville's "Bartleby"

Margaret Fuller's "Our City Charities"

Fanny Fern's "Blackwells Island [I-III]"

Henry David Thoreau's "Resistance to Civil Government" and Walden (Where I Lived, What I Lived For and Conclusion)

Walt Whitman's Song of Myself (1, 6, 13) and "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"

Emily Dickinson (TBA)

The Story of the Stone (part four)

Cultural China's picture of Baoyu, Baochai, and (I think) Dai-yu will be a good lead for this entry on the fourth volume of the Story of the Stone.  Here the cousins are older.  Bao-yu has begun to take his studies much more seriously, in part to please his father and the rest of his family but also because he is no longer able to spend time with his female cousins.  Some have returned home; some are married.  In fact, his family is making arrangements for his marriage to Baochai (the young lady on the right) as well.  Bao-yu, on the other hand, loves Dai-yu even though she is pushing him away.  (She continues to be ill in this book and at one point even tries to will her death.)  Yet Dai-yu hopes that she will marry Bao-yu.  Finally, despite what this picture implies, Baochai is pushing herself away from Bao-yu as well.  She has moved back in with her mother and taken on more responsibilities as her family situation has become worse and worse, even with the marriage of her brother Xue Pan, who seems to have reformed. 

However, Xue Pan has also married Xia Jin-gui, a spoiled yet wealthy young lady who is constantly trying to assert herself and cause trouble in her husband's family.  She is jealous of her husband's "chamber wife," Caltrop (whom she arbitrarily renames); her own maid; and, of course, Baochai.  Then, after her husband is sent to prison for killing a waiter, Xia Jin-gui attempts to seduce her husband's cousin, a clean-cut young man.

In this volume, even more so than in Volume 3, we see the rivalries within the family and among their servants.  I have already mentioned Xue Pan's wife.  In addition, as Wang Xi-feng becomes weaker and the family less rich, she becomes vulnerable to attacks from others.  At one point when her daughter is very ill, Jia Huan, the son of a jealous concubine, knocks over the medicine that Wang Xi-feng has gone to great lengths to make for her daughter.  Then the convent located in the family compound is the site of a lurid scandal.  The family member responsible for maintaining this convent is caught partying with the young novices.  The family then disbands the convent, returning the novices to their families. 



Amidst all of this turmoil Bao-yu and Dai-yu find time to discuss their mutual love of music.  Not only is Dai-yu a brilliant poet but she is also proficient on the qin, a seven-string instrument that is now called the guqin.  (It is pictured above.)  For more information about this instrument, see this link:  http://www.chineseculture.net/guqin/qinjieshao.html 
To listen to what the guqin sounds like, see these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKNeParT2eQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRFFpxkrfGw&feature=related

At the climax of this volume, right before he is about to go to a viewing party for out-of-season crab flowers, Bao-yu loses his jade.  He attempts to cover it up at first, but he is not successful as he quickly becomes very ill.  Despite everyone's best efforts, including a visit to a psychic, the jade does not turn up.  Bao-yu continues to be quite ill, and in order to cure him, Grandmother Jia and the rest of his family decide to bring about the union of jade and gold...that is...marry him off to Baochai.  Since he is still very much in love with Dai-yu, the family tricks him into believing that he will marry her...hence this scene below.

Then, as Bao-yu and Baochai marry, Dai-yu dies alone, with only her maid Nightingale to keep her company.  (The family has neglected her in this last illness.)  Bao-yu relapses but does not learn about his beloved's death until Baochai informs him.  In the short run, he appears to handle the news well, but in the next volume, we will see about the long run!

I'll close this section with an image from a Shanghai ballet based on The Story of the Stone.  Of course, here, Bao-yu is with Dai-yu.


The fourth volume of The Story of the Stone is also a good point to talk about the novel's authorship.  In the version of the novel that I've read, the first three volumes are exclusively the work of Cao Xueqin (@ 1715 - 1763 or 1764), a descendant of a once-flourishing family that fell into disgrace in the 1720s.  The last two volumes were edited and even reconstructed by Gao E (1785 - 1838) as some chapters were missing and there were different versions of others.  Translator David Hawkes has speculated that the missing chapters had been supressed.  Interestingly, the fourth and fifth volumes contain many references to the Emperor's benevolence.

I'll end this entry with an image of Cao Xueqin's statue in Beijing and one of the Cao Xueqin Memorial Hall in a suburb of that city. The author, however, was not from the capital.  He was born in Nanjing and did not move to Beijing until after his family's disgrace.  However, his novel is set in Beijing.

 

The Story of the Stone (part three)

Since I'm not able to find a large enough picture of the cover to Volume 3, I will post this picture of a couple in the Grand View Garden from www.beijingguide2008.com.  It looks like this couple may be actors dressed as Bai-yu and Lin-yu. 

However, this picture is idyllic and belies the overall tone of this volume, "The Warning Voice."  At the end of the volume, Bai-yu is still living in the garden with *most* of the young people who were there at the beginning, and he and his father have begun to be reconciled to each other, but it is clear that things have begun to fall apart for the family.  Throughout the end of Vol. 2 and the whole of Vol. 3, the adult women (especially Wang Xifeng and Lady Wang but also Bao-chai) are concerned about its financial situation.  Xifeng herself is bedridden at the beginning of the volume after giving birth to a stillborn son.  Bai-yu's half-sister Tan-chun and his sister-in-law Li Wan have taken on Xifeng's duties, and they are constantly struggling to manage the family complex and its servants.  Much of the volume is taken up with the servants' jostling for power, prestige, and stolen goods as well as the family's efforts to discipline them for their thefts, gambling, and drunkenness. Moreover, the family is in mourning for Sir Jia Jing, its nominal head, and the Dowager Consort of the late Emperor.  She is not related to the family, but their social position requires that they enter mourning for her.

Below are 19th century painter Xu Baozhuan's depictions of two of Bai-yu's senior maids.  The first is Skybright, a skilled seamstress with a sharp tongue.  She will be one of the servants fired by Lady Wang, and she will die shortly after she is sent to live with her cousin and his vicious wife.  The second is Aroma, Bao-yu's chief maid and "chamber wife."





In addition, soon after her stillbirth, Wang Xifeng's husband Jia Lian marries another woman secretly and sets up a household with her outside the family's compound.  (As you may know from Raise the Red Lantern, men were permitted to have multiple wives.  However, Jia Lian is afraid how his wife and family will respond to his taking a second wife, and, as I have mentioned above, the family is in mourning.)  Once Xifeng finds out about her husband's secret marriage to You Er-jie, she brings her back to the family compound only to make her life miserable.  Er-jie, by the way, commits suicide after this mistreatment that includes the miscarriage of a son.  This miscarriage was induced by the incompetent doctor whom Xifeng hires for her. 

Jia Zheng's return to the family comes as a relief to them and even the reader.  (Remember that he nearly killed Bao-yu in Volume 2.)  Before his father's return, Bao-yu scurries around to complete all the tasks that his father has set him.  In fact, he has to ask his female cousins to help him compile enough calligraphy.  Nevertheless, father and son reconcile.  Jia Zheng even commissions his son to write a poem on a historical figure, the Winsome Colonel, a woman who goes to war to avenge the death of Prince Heng. 

Below is a picture of Mu Guiyung, another of China's woman warriors.


At the end of the third volume, Bao-yu's companions are beginning to move out of the garden.  Bao-chai chooses to move back in with her mother.  The maid Caltrop must move back in with her master Xue Pan once he returns from a long journey.  He soon marries a cruel and capricious woman who torments Caltrop.  Another companion, Ying-chun, marries, and others will soon follow.

I'll finish with a more desolate picture from the Grand View Garden in Beijing.

Bettina Judd's Reading 9/17 at MC

 I thought I'd blow off some of this blog's dust today and write about Bettina Judd's reading at MC.  It's been good to read poems from other times and places ("The Ballad of Mulan" and so on), but I've always liked going to readings to hear what other people are writing NOW.

Bettina Judd's poetry fits in nicely with last week's readings...Robert Hayden's "Middle Passage," Muriel Ruykeser's "Absolom," and even Seamus Heaney's "The Tollund Man" and "The Bog Queen."  Research is a significant part of Ms. Judd's writing process since many of her poems are about historical figures or individuals who are in the news.  The first few poems that she read were from a project that she is doing on gynecological experimentation and its impact on Black women's bodies.  Several were from the point of view of Joyce Heth, a slave whom P.T. Barnum had bought and exhibited as George Washington's nurse in 1835 and 1836.  Barnum claimed that she was 160; Ms. Heth was actually in her 70s.  (Below is a picture from a play, "The Exploitation of Joyce Heth," that was performed in New York.)

Another picture is one of Barnum's advertisements:

For more about Ms. Heth's story, see this link from George Mason University:

http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/jackson/5pts/museum/heth.html

Bettina Judd also read poems about more contemporary women.  One was the girl, Latasha Harlins, who was shot in the back of the head by a Korean-American store owner in 1991.  The relatively light sentence that the store owner received was one of the causes of the L.A. riots in 1992.  Having grown up in L.A. and its suburbs, Ms. Judd recalled the impact of Harlins' murder.  She added that at the time she had seen tapes of the shooting on TV.  Another startling poem was about a woman who was tortured and killed by her ex-lover.  A third was about a woman who lay dying and ignored in a NYC emergency ward.

As you can see, Ms. Judd's work is about the violence of history, especially as it affects Black women.  These poems are not for everyone.  Curiously, she read her poems in a soft, quiet voice, swallowing her words.  However, these were not poems for shouting and declaiming.  I would be interested in hearing her read in a different venue...but I was glad to see how packed the room was.

Oh yes...and Ms. Judd talked about *her* approach to writing poetry.  She discussed the projects that she works on.  The poems about gynecological experimentation actually came out of a series of watercolors that she had been working on.  She tries to write a poem a day, not worrying about whether that poem is good or bad.  It is "just" a draft, and she will continue to work on it.  This appears to be an approach that she has taken from the Cave Canem Poets.  Here is a link to their site!  (Caution:  This link has been broken some of the time, so...beware!)

http://cavecanempoets.org/

Here are some links to poems by Bettina Judd.  The first is "A Conversation After Teeth." 

http://penzitspronouncedpants.blogspot.com/2008/08/guest-pnz-conversation-after-teeth.html

Another is her poem, "Sankofa: Gender Bend."

http://www.torchpoetry.org/Fall%2007/bettinajudd.htm

Here is her MySpace page where you may listen to her read some poems, including "Sankofa."

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=199530233

And here is a link to her blog:

http://www.ablackgirl.com/wordpress/


Next up...the Poetry at Noon for World Peace Day on 9/22!

A Few Poems to Start With

Since our books may or may not be in by the time our semester starts, I thought that I'd post a few readings up here to begin with.  These poems will respond to the prompts I've posted on the discussion board.  In these poems, poets will introduce themselves, recall their first memories of language, and pay homage to earlier poets.  This homage may not be as elaborate as John Berryman's Homage to Mistress Bradstreet, but there are many ways to honor the past.

I will post links to seven poems.  Feel free to comment on any or all of them.  Some will be older than the poems in our anthology.  Others may be newer.

Let's start with Emily Dickinson's "I'm nobody.  Who are you?"

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/2619.html

The picture below is from a site where you may listen to two of her poems set to music by Nancy Robinson.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/ngal/z-dickinson.htm

In Langston Hughes' "Theme for English B," the speaker might be introducing himself to a professor in his writing class at Columbia University.

http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/English_B.html

Below is a picture of Hughes a year or so after he left Columbia.  (He would eventually graduate from Lincoln University.)

Here is a link to "I am the woman," a poem by one of my former teachers, Joan Dobbie.  (I was in her workshop in Eugene, OR.)  The link contains the text version of the poem and a YouTube video of her reading her poem.  (By the way, you might notice that this poem really fits one of the prompts for our writing practice. Joan's poem was the one that gave me the idea for it!  Thanks, Joan!)

http://iamthewoman.blogspot.com/

Now I'd like to change the mood a little and move onto a poem about an unusual name.  How many of you remember reading Shel Silverstein's poetry?  One of the poems he wrote was "A Boy Named Sue."

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/shel_silverstein/poems/14827

You may also know it as a song that Johnny Cash sang.  This YouTube video is of his performance at San Quentin Prison in California:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M89c3hWx3RQ

FYAmuse, here is a small picture of the cover of Shel Silverstein's album A Boy Named Sue.


Cheryl Savageau's "Looking for Indians" is kind of about language and kind of about one's name.  I thought that you might like to read it.

http://www.curbstone.org/bookexcerpt.cfm?BookID=69

Here is a little more information about the Abenaki.

http://www.native-languages.org/abenaki.htm

http://www.abenakination.org/

The Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario wrote this tribute to Walt Whitman in 1887, when Whitman was still alive.  I'm afraid that I don't know the name of the translator.

http://falcon.tamucc.edu/~stalley/2335Resources/DarioWhitman.htm

Here is the original poem in Spanish:

http://www.poemas-del-alma.com/walt-whitman.htm

Interestingly, in English at least, the translation of Dario's blast against Theodore Roosevelt is more available than his homage to Whitman.

The poem below, Philip Levine's "M. Degas Teaches Art and Science at Durfee Intermediate School -- Detroit 1942," is not an homage to an earlier poet, but I thought that you would like it.  Moreover, this site includes an audio file of the poet reading his work.

http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/levine/m._degas_teaches_art_and_science_at_durfee_intermediate_school--detroit1942.php

In case you are not familiar with Edgar Degas' work, here is an example below:


Feel free to post your own responses to these poems at our discussion board or here.  Here are some questions, though, to start with.

-- Which of these poems are you reading for the first time?  What is your first impression of each poem and poet?

-- Which of these poems are you re-reading?  When did you first read this poem?  What jumped out at you then?  What jumps out at you now?

-- If you read Spanish, what jumped out at you as you read Ruben Dario's "Walt Whitman" in its original language?

-- What does Ruben Dario admire about Walt Whitman?  If you've read Whitman's work or know of him, how is Dario's Whitman different from yours?  How are they the same?

-- What kind of a teacher does M. Degas seem to be?  Which poet, painter, or musician would you imagine teaching at MC?  Why?

I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say!

Upcoming Poetry at MC

  No, he's not reading at MC this semester...as far as I know...but I am surprised at how difficult it is to find a good lead picture for a blog entry announcing poetry readings.  I realize that we are an online class and that not everyone is available during the day, but I thought I'd announce a series of readings at the campus.  This series is run by our developmental writing program, but I am intending to attend at least one or two...and report on them here!

On Wednesday, Sept. 17 Bettina Judd will read and discuss her poetry.  Here's a link to her blog:  http://www.ablackgirl.com/index.html  One of her poems is "Gender Bend: Sankofa," Sankofa being an Adinkra symbol that means learning from the past.  Adinkra symbols come from Ghana, but you may have seen some of them in clothing or artwork or even tattoos.

http://www.torchpoetry.org/Fall%2007/bettinajudd.htm
 
More of her poetry is available at her MySpace site:  http://www.myspace.com/bettinajudd If you are interested in political poetry, poetry about the body, women's poetry, and African-American poetry, I encourage you to attend this reading...and/or explore her work.

On Wednesday, October 22 poet and memoirist E. Ethelbert Miller will be reading his work.  Some of you may have read his work or been to his readings, but here is a link to his website:

http://www.eethelbertmiller.com/

Here is his page at the Academy of American Poets' site:

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/485

You may also listen to him read poems about fatherhood at this site:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91531158

Or you may hear a minute of his poetry at this site:

http://aalbc.com/authors/jazz.htm

I found some pictures of E. Ethelbert Miller reading his poetry (where were these pictures an hour or two ago?!), but most were on Flicker.  Here is a picture that wasn't.  Below that is the cover of his memoir, Fathering Words, a book that I'd like to read soon.  I enjoy reading memoirs, especially when they are set in NYC.


On Wednesday, November 5, the Korean journalist, poet, and editor Yearn Hong Choi will be reading his poetry and essays at MC.  I'm glad to see that Korean culture will be getting more attention.  Here is a link to this poet's work:

http://www.poetswest.com/selected.htm

Also, this review of Surfacing Sadness, an anthology edited by Yearn Hong Choi, appeared in the KoreAm Journal:

http://www.koreamjournal.com/Magazine/index.php/kj/layout/set/print/content/view/print/659

Dr. Choi has more recently edited Fragrance of Poetry, an anthology of Korean-American poetry.  The VOA News interviewed him and two other poets whose work appears in this collection:

http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-09/2005-09-09-voa69.cfm





Then, on Wednesday November 19, Sylvia Lee, a visiting professor at MC, will read from her poems.  Here is a link to a set of her poems. http://www.damaya.net/poems/Jordan-Rome/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=112

Here are some pictures from the Cornelia Street Cafe, the venue for a reading series that Prof. Lee co-curates.



Each of these readings take place from 9:30 to 10:20 and 11 to 11:50 at a site to be announced later.  Dr. Choi and Prof. Lee will also read from 1 to 1:50.

Gary Snyder's Reading at the Smithsonian

Link 

Here's a link to my blog entry about Beat poet and translator Gary Snyder's recent reading in DC.  He is one of my favorite poets these days.  As you might imagine from the picture above, he writes about nature and is based out west in Northern California.  Enjoy!